A poem marking the anniversary of the death of Zisimos Lorentzatos.

On this day in 2004, the writer, author and literary critic Zisimos Lorentzatos passed away. He was a man of a particularly low profile, yet his personality left a profound intellectual mark on Greek literature, far transcending his own era. To mark today’s anniversary of his death, we read one of his few rhyming poems, ‘To Mr Voria’, which is included in the book Poems (Ikaros, 2006), which contains the collections ‘Mikra Syrtis’, ‘Alphabetari’ and ‘Collection’.   OF MR NORTH Rolling the wavesLike the possessedThey turn foamingThe winds of the north wind All day long it did not ceaseThe sea’s furyWhich blew a line straight to your bow But the helm remainedIn the helmsman’s handsOn the swiftest of pathsAmidst the terror All you see around you is nothing but driftwood and the blackness of death’s hound in the hold, as the waves, like possessed spirits, swirl foaming in the winds of the north wind. * * *Mother night, day I stay, Waiting for the drowned man, With a bell and a trisagio, In the sea’s murmur, On the rocky shore, on the sand, In the seaweed, in the seaweed, I wait for him day and night, Wrapped in the nets, Washed by the sea breeze, Of thecaressed by the waves The baby he found today His eternal birth. A few words about Zissimos Lorentzatos: Zisimos Lorentzatos, son of the philologist and academic Panagiotis Lorentzatos, was born in Athens on 25 June 1915. After completing his secondary education, he attended courses at the Faculties of Law and Philosophy, and subsequently devoted himself to critical study, translation and poetry.His first foray into literature came in 1936 with the study ‘Edgar Poe: The Exceptions; The Philosophy of Composition; The Poetic Principle’, which he later disavowed, and he established himself with his book ‘Essay I’, on the poetic work of Dionysios Solomos.He also published studies on the work of Alexandros Papadiamantis, Giorgos Seferis, C.P. Cavafy, Angelos Sikelianos, Dimitris Hatzis and others. In the field of translation, he worked on authors such as Ezra Pound, André Gide and William Blake. In 1988, he was awarded the First State Prize for Criticism and Essays, which he declined, whilst in 2001 he was honoured with the Ourani Foundation Prize for his entire body of work.He passed away on 3 February 2004. You can read more about Zisimos Lorentzatos’s books here: http://ikarosbooks.gr/authors/lorentzatos